


half and half, two sugars

by katplanet



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Drug Use, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, The Craigslist Missed Connections of Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27159065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katplanet/pseuds/katplanet
Summary: It's been months since the last time Dave had any reason to raise his voice, but he has a finite window to close one more chapter, put the period at the end of one more sentence, so he shouts."Klaus!"For a long moment, he's too late, the parentheses are going to stay open forever.And then Klaus reappears in Dave's door, sunglasses held halfway to his face, looking mystified, a little scared."Please don't have palm tattoos," he says, and Dave laughs.
Relationships: David “Dave” Katz/OMC, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 34
Kudos: 163





	half and half, two sugars

He looks almost exactly the same as he did the last time Dave saw him - a more daring outfit, maybe, but the same curly brown hair, the same cheekbones. The same tired eyes. Dave recognizes him in a second, which is good, because that's all the time he gets when the man in question is breezing past the door frame in the terrible fluorescent lighting of the hallway.

It's been months since the last time Dave had any reason to raise his voice, but he has a finite window to close one more chapter, put the period at the end of one more sentence, so he shouts.

"Klaus!"

For a long moment, he's too late, the parentheses are going to stay open forever.

And then Klaus reappears in Dave's door, sunglasses held halfway to his face, looking mystified, a little scared.

"Please don't have palm tattoos," he says, and Dave laughs, flashes his bare hands even though it tugs at the IV in his arm a little bit.

"You're clear."

Now Klaus is staring, and Dave hadn't been sure, hadn't actually known what he was getting himself into, but there, hanging over top of Klaus's cheeky little crop top, are the dog tags. Dave's dog tags? Somebody's dog tags.

"Dave," Klaus says, carefully, like he's not sold on putting it out into the world.

Dave smiles at him. "Nice try," he says, "but you were off by about fifty years."

The sunglasses drop right out of Klaus's hands onto the floor. He sprints across Dave's room, dodges the chairs and sits on the edge of Dave's bed like he owns the place.

"Oh my god," Klaus says, "I broke time."

"So it was time travel? Oh, hell, I ruled that theory out years ago."

"You're fucking kidding me." Klaus holds a hand up to his face like he's going to cover his mouth, or his eyes, but just lets it hang there for a while before dropping it back into his lap.

"You, uh," Dave says, because not even his mother had come up with etiquette to drill into him for this situation. "You okay?"

"What? I'm amazing, why?"

"You're in a hospital."

"Oh!" Klaus shakes his head. "Oh, um, no, my dumb brother picked a fight he couldn't win. He's getting put back together."

"You have a brother? There's two of you?"

"There's seven of me. Well, six. Um - thirteen? Fourteen? It's gotten so complicated, baby."

Dave … raises an eyebrow. "Baby?"

"Oops," Klaus says, "sorry, you're - look at you, you're married!" He gasps, reaches out and touches the band on Dave's finger.

"As soon as it was legal. One of the first couples at the courthouse."

Klaus beams, like he’s proud. "When do I get to meet him?"

"Missed him by a year and and a half, I'm afraid."

"Oh, honey." Klaus rests his palm on the back of Dave's hand, the kind of easy familiarity that puts him in the mind of Ira, and not just because they're talking about him. "How many years before that?"

"Thirty-seven."

Klaus whistles. "Quite a run, Katz."

"Something to look forward to when all this is over, I suppose."

"Oh, yeah, uh." Klaus leans in, conspiratorial. "What're you in for?"

Dave laughs before he can stop himself. "Got picked up for some suspicious activity in my liver. Now it's everywhere else."

"Oof. What's the sentence?"

"A few months, give or take. Not really worth filing an appeal."

"How did imminent death make you  _ more  _ morbid?"

"Sorry."

"God, no, I love it. Are you allowed to drink coffee?"

"What are they gonna do, kill me?"

"I missed you," Klaus says, "so much," which is an odd thing for him to say to Dave, who he has spoken to all of three times, but - well.

"I have questions," Dave says.

"For once, I have answers. Half and half, two sugars?"

"First question, who told you how I take my coffee?"

"You did," Klaus says. "Back in five."

℘

"Snaggletooth? The kid who used to count cards? I think his name was Colin or something."

Dave shakes his head.

"Lucky you, he was a little shit."

Klaus made Dave's coffee perfectly. It's delicious. He sips it, watches Klaus wrack his memory for names they haven't tossed out between them yet.

"Oh," Dave says, as his brain catches up to him, "wait, there was that bar in Saigon. Somebody got in a fight over cards while we were on leave. Scrawny little fucker got punched in the nose, bled all over himself outside."

"Did he have a snaggletooth?"

"You know, I was more focused on the blood, oddly enough."

"I bet it was him. I hope it was. He deserved it."

"Did he cheat  _ you _ at cards or something?"

"No, but he got everybody on their guard whenever he played. Made it hard for me and Ben to sneak peeks."

Dave snorts. "I didn't know a Ben, either, but he sounds like a nice upstanding fellow."

"Oh, he wouldn't have been there without me. He was my dead ghost brother," Klaus adds, like it's by way of explanation. "Never got a chance to introduce you two."

"I thought you were a time traveler, not a … ghost seer."

"I was a ghost seer first. The time travel is more of a recent development."

"Sure," Dave says, "okay."

"Wait.” Klaus gasps. "The bar! With the jukebox?"

"That's the one."

"Oh my god, please tell me you met Linh there."

"Short hair, sweet smile. She had a friend, a working girl - went by Annie?"

Klaus throws his fist up in the air and actually whoops a cheer. "Yes! Oh, thank god, I loved Linh, she was perfect. She and her  _ friend _ ," he says, with a look that Dave knows intimately from years of being Ira's  _ friend _ , "helped us get our room."

" _ Our _ room. You and me?"

Klaus waggles his eyebrows over his cup of coffee. "You and me, baby."

"We had a room. To ourselves. On leave."

"I don't know what kind of girl you think I am, Katz, but I never kiss and tell."

"I think you're fine if the kissing and the telling are the same person."

Klaus takes a prim sip, swallows, and says, "You didn't let me out of bed for two days."

"Well, shit," Dave says. "Good for me."

"Are you kidding? Good for  _ me. _ You," Klaus says, jabbing a finger at Dave, "are a very quick study when you want to be."

"Last time I had a handsome young man say that to me, it was my doctor showing me how to use a colostomy bag."

"Oh my god, you can actually pull off making old people jokes now."

"I know," Dave says, "I was born to be 80."

Klaus smiles wider at that than it really deserves, and takes another sip of his coffee.

℘

Klaus leaves, and then, the next day, he comes back.

"I'm not bothering you, am I?" he asks, after he's been there for an hour, taken off his shoes and sweater and pulled an entire knitting project out of his bag. "Not interrupting anything?"

"I think my library books can wait until the mysterious and beautiful time necromancer from my bygone youth has somewhere else he needs to be."

"You are such a  _ nerd. _ "

"Partially your fault. Thanks for tipping me off on  _ Dune, _ it was good."

"I bet you used to go to conventions."

"So many conventions."

Klaus smiles at him over his clicking needles. Dave has no idea what Klaus is making, but it looks like he's doing it badly. "You and the family?"

"I was Kirk, Ira was Spock."

"Aww, gross. Just the two of you? No kiddos?"

"Nieces," Dave says. "The oldest is a Leia girl."

"Love a good role model."

"Leia and Sarah, couldn't do better."

Klaus pauses his knitting. "Sarah, huh?"

"Yeah." Dave had known Klaus in '68, and if things had gone the same for that version of himself, Sarah would've just found out about him, would've- "She came around, more or less. With Ira and me."

Klaus smiles, just a little. "I knew she would."

"And Ira's brothers never had an issue with me in the first place, so we had his family, too. They're all spread out, though, more of a holidays thing."

"Where's Sarah now?"

"Oh, drinking sweet tea on her porch, I imagine. We make phone calls. She'll come see me off when things get dire."

"What's that like? Not tripping over your sibling every time you want to do something."

"Pretty healthy for me and her, I'd say. But it sounds like you and yours are a special case."

"Ugh. You're not wrong."

"How are things going?" Dave asks him. "Are you, uh. Settling in okay?"

Klaus wrinkles his nose. "I don't think a single one of us has ever settled in anywhere."

"Maybe now's your chance."

"That would require us to stop raging against the dying of the light," Klaus says. "Which I'm all for, quite frankly, but I tend to be outvoted."

“It sounds like a complicated situation.”

“Dicey, yeah. It involves - well. My niece, I guess.”

“You have a niece?”

“I had a niece. Last time around.”

“Ah.”

“I never met the kid. Can’t imagine my sister would churn out a bad one, though. And  _ then, _ ” Klaus sighs, “there’s my brother’s old employer on our asses, and my other sister’s girlfriend’s son, and I guess my dad’s an alien now? He may have always been an alien, we’re not sure. And my dead brother Ben, I think I mentioned him. He’s alive again, but he’s an asshole. Turns out having no one but his cthulhu intestine monster to talk to makes him really fucking unpleasant, so, you know, I was good for something after all.”

Dave waits to make sure Klaus is done, and then says, “That’s a lot.”

“And half of it’s not even real!” Klaus throws his hands in the air, flops back in his chair. “Like, hey, my best friend double-died, and at first it sort of seemed like he un-died, you know? But he never died in the first place. He didn’t die, and now he’s a creep who’s too into killing people. So why am I still sad about him double-dying? It never happened.”

“It happened to you,” Dave says.

“You sound like Vanya,” Klaus says. “I’d say you sound like Allison, but you’re not yelling at me.”

“Is Allison the one who lost her daughter?”

“Yeah. She’s, uh. Not thrilled about all of this.”

“Can’t really blame her, can you?”

“God, no, ‘course not. I mean, it’d be cool if she didn’t act like she was the only one with any chips on the table. That’d be nice.”

“Family,” Dave says. “It’s a minefield.”

“Dad took us to an actual minefield, once,” Klaus says. “Like, for training. I think we were nine?”

“I need to learn to stop using metaphors with you.”

“Or get weirder metaphors.”

“I’m supposed to out-weird a child superhero from an alternate timeline?”

“I put my pants on one leg at a time like everybody else.”

“You’re wearing a skirt.”

Klaus smiles his pretty smile. “It’s a metaphor.”

℘

Klaus skips a day, and then shows up visibly ill, sallow and jittery and bloodshot. Dave knows what he's looking at, and he doesn't mention it when Klaus drinks his coffee twice as fast as usual, or when his hands tremble in his lap, or when he ducks into the ensuite to be sick.

"Sorry," Klaus says, when he comes back out. He opens his mouth like he's going to say more, make an excuse, but then he looks at Dave's face and shuts it again.

"I worked at the VA for three decades, you know," Dave says. "Seen a hell of a lot worse than whatever you can cook up for me."

Klaus smiles, resigned. Climbs into his plastic hospital chair feet-first like a long gangly child. "You're retired, though, right? Hardly fair to drag you out of your well-earned repose."

"Call it a free consultation," Dave says. "What is it? Can I ask?"

"Um," Klaus says, and proceeds to list off four things, three of which Dave has heard of, none of which play well together.

"Well, good thing you're in a hospital."

"Oh, ha ha."

"Really," Dave says, "let me see your hands."

Klaus passes his hands over with the ease of someone who has passed his hands over many times to many people for many reasons. They're so thin, his hands. They give Dave's a run for their money, though they're missing the liver spots, the wiry white hair. Those palm tattoos Dave had found so strange when he was younger are stark black against Klaus's skin, which has had all the sunny warmth sapped out of it overnight.

But his fingers look fine, no blueness in the tips or under the nails. They're unsteady when Dave holds them, a little clammy, but Klaus can keep them still enough for Dave to check his pulse.

"Do you feel lightheaded?" Dave asks him.

Klaus says, "You're holding my hands."

"I'm done. You can have them back."

"No, just." Klaus shakes his head, swallows. "I meant, of course I'm lightheaded, you're holding my hands."

Dave looks at him. Says, "We were in love."

"Yeah."

"You told me that. I guess I never really got it."

"Makes sense. I wouldn't have believed it, either, if you'd told me beforehand."

"I'd love to remember," Dave tells him. "Sounds like a hell of a thing."

Klaus turns his hands in Dave's until he's holding them back. Brings the whole bundle of them up to his lips and kisses Dave's knuckles, his eyes shut, long lashes and smudged makeup. Presses his forehead to their clasped fingers and keeps it there for a moment, like he's praying. And then he puts them down on the bed, lets them go. Picks up his coffee cup, even though it's empty.

"This go around is better, I think," Klaus says.

"Better for me, maybe."

"Yeah, better."

"Stay with me a while longer," Dave says. "Keep you from keeling over, keep me company. Double whammy."

"Oh, if you insist," Klaus says, kicking his boots up on the foot of Dave's mattress. 

Dave falls asleep before Klaus leaves. It was bound to happen eventually. There might actually be more drugs in his system than there are in Klaus's, and while Dave's are more carefully regulated, they're also absolutely  _ everywhere. _ Making things easier on his body while he gets his reading done. Making it gentler. He's stopped trying to keep track of exactly what they're doing; he spent a lot of time with doctors, back in the day. He trusts the process.

Anyway, what's the worst that could happen?

He turns to tell Klaus this, but he's gone, and it's dark outside. There's a poorly-knitted blanket laid out on top of the hospital sheets, over the thin mounds of Dave's legs, where he sometimes gets cold.

℘

The last time he sees Klaus, there's an angry bruise snarled up across his cheekbone, a cut at the center of it. His eyes are red-rimmed, and his hands shake when he holds Dave's.

"Tell me everything," Klaus says, and his voice is shaking, too. "Everything about your life, start to finish. I'll remember."

"Hey, now," Dave says, "talk to me," and Klaus melts everywhere but his hands, which cling to Dave, a death grip.

"They're, um." Klaus swallows. "They're trying to reset the timeline. I told them they can't, that it'll undo everything that's happened here, every life, every-"

"Breathe." Dave puts his free hand over Klaus's over his, holds him still that way. "Why does that mean you need my autobiography?"

Klaus's eyes go wet all at once, like a stepped-on shower mat. "In my timeline," he says, "you die. You die in my arms. I  _ hold _ you."

"Lucky for me," Dave says, "that's not the timeline I'm in."

"They're trying to - to take your life from you, I can't let them-"

"Klaus," Dave says. "No one can take my life from me. I lived it."

"You won't have. That's what I'm trying to tell you, baby, they'll put everything back the way it was."

"Sweetheart," Dave says, and Klaus sobs, just once. "Just because something ends doesn't mean it didn't happen."

"No," Klaus says, "no, it'll never even have  _ begun. _ "

"I don't buy that." Dave rubs his thumb over the sharp bones in Klaus's wrist. "Not for a second. If something happens, it happens, even if the world forgets it. When Ira and I are gone, and anyone who would ever remember us is gone, we'll still have loved each other. Even if the sky falls, or time rewinds, we'll still have loved each other."

Klaus stares at him, his pretty bottle green eyes. Dave must have been drawn to those eyes like beacons, clear through a haze of violence.

"Just like," Dave says, "how no matter what happens, there will always have been a me who fell in love with you."

Klaus leans in and buries his face in Dave's chest. "I'm so fucking sick of this," he says, muffled into Dave’s shirt.

"I may not have kept you in bed for two days in Saigon, this time around, but I think I still have a good enough read on you to know you'll be all right."

"I'm genuinely not sure if that's true."

"Well," Dave says, and he puts a hand in Klaus's curls, "I am, and you're gonna prove me right."

Klaus sniffles, keeps his face where it is as he reaches up and wraps his arm around Dave's stomach. There's not a whole lot left of Dave to hold, this far into things, but Klaus sure as hell holds it. Latches on, and stays put for a long time.

Once the silence has settled enough, Dave says, "I'm glad I got to see you again."

"That sounds like goodbye, baby."

"It is, isn't it?"

Klaus looks up at him, finally. "Didn't get to do this part, last time."

"Well, then, I'm glad you got to see me again, too."

Klaus sits up enough to move his hand from Dave's waist up to cup his jaw. "Can I - ugh, I'm sorry, you're married, you probably wanna leave this kind of thing to him."

"We lived through the '70s, Klaus, I don't think he'd mind."

Klaus glances over at the other side of the room, goes stock still for a moment, then laughs out loud. "Yep, just got the thumbs up."

Dave blinks, and then he's laughing, too, misty-eyed and smiling against Klaus's lips as he kisses him once, slowly, sweetly. 

"You wanna say hello to him?" Klaus asks him, once they break apart. "I can - before I go."

"You know what, what the hell," Dave says, settling back against his pillow. "It's that kind of week."


End file.
